Scattered among the highlight reels were video tributes from Tom Cruise, Bill Clinton, Judd Apatow, William Shatner, Owen Wilson, Robert Downey Jr. (last year's recipient), Conan O'Brien and Stiller's parents -- legendary comedians Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, as well as his sister Amy Stiller. (For another take on Stiller's status in Hollywood, check out this laudatory New Yorker profile.)

Highlights of the tributes to Stiller and his acceptance speech are below.

Presenting the award, Eugene Levy and Martin Short delivered the best round of jokes of the night--including stabs at General Petraeus. Levy thinks Steven Spielberg already has Stiller in mind for "Lincoln 2." It's called "There's Something About Mary Todd Lincoln." Short noted, "There's a name for people who are half Jewish and half Irish -- we call them a Jew."

Once the award was in Stiller's hands, he realized the name on the object was Robert Downey Jr. He didn't let it stop him. To Levy, Stiller said; "When I was younger I wanted to be you, and now I just want to be me--younger."

Taking the sincere route was Patton Oswalt, who called Stiller the most focused person he knows, possessing some unknown energy source. On his work in the animated "Madagascar" franchise, Jeffrey Katzenberg said that "most people think voice work is the easiest job in the world, but not if you're Ben Stiller." Stiller improvised many of his own lines. Three words sum up Stiller for Katzenberg: "Perfection, prolific and planner." He congratulated him on "still going strong."

Others like Andy Dick took the self-deprecating sad-comic route, thanking Stiller for giving him his start: "Ben Stiller gave me everything that for the next twenty years I fucked up." He told him: "You're bigger than Abbot and Costello! You're bigger than any single or comedy duo!"

Will Ferrell went directly for the gutter, regaling the crowd with the "one area that won't be discussed" by anyone else. "Few people know that Ben has one of the most marvelous, exciting and vibrant penises I've ever seen. I've seen it in urinals, showers, one time just because he wanted to show it to me." And still there was more: "If we ignore this subject because of our puritanical beliefs, that would be a crime."

David Cross, who got his start working with Stiller on the short-lived "The Ben Stiller Show," recalled meeting him while he was eating a wheat-free chocolate cake on a treadmill. "Ben gave me my first job, and a lot of people blame him for that, but thank you," he said.

Jack Black ("Cable Guy," "Tropic Thunder") thought he was showing up for a funeral. "What can I say, the world is a little emptier without the magic of Ben Stiller,..[cries]…he was a friend..wait, he's not dead?" Black spoke about Stiller's philanthropic work, including an Art auction he arranged to benefit Haiti. Taylor later shared a video of The Stiller Foundation's work building schools in Haiti, and stated that the $13.9 million dollars raised by the auction went directly to organizations on the ground after the earthquake. In Clinton's tribute video he congratulated Stiller for "all the smiles you've put on all those children's faces in Haiti."

Laura Dern ("Little Fockers") spoke about his dramatic work (including "Greenberg," "Empire of the Sun," "Royal Tenenbaums"). According to their parents, Dern and Stiller knew each other and played as small children long before both had childhood appearances on The Merv Griffin show. She also revealed that she's been lucky enough to watch Stiller's rendition of "Grease Lightning." Dern thanked him for being "the first friend to write and call when you've seen a friends' work," and gushed: "You're always there to root for us, and that's such an amazing thing to give an artist or friend."

Jennifer Aniston, introducing a reel of Stiller's work as romantic lead, says that he has "that unique ability to make smart sexy and nebbishness nonchalant."

William Shatner's tribute video was mostly a self-contratulating exercise in which he determined that all of Stiller's best qualities, from musculature and looks to talent, are shared with Shatner--his true father.

Thompson on Hollywood

Born and raised in Manhattan, Anne Thompson grew up going to the Thalia and The New Yorker and wound up at grad Cinema Studies at NYU. She worked at United Artists and Film Comment before heading west as that magazine's west coast editor. She wrote for the LA Weekly, Sight and Sound, Empire, The New York Times and Entertainment Weekly before serving as West Coast Editor of Premiere. She wrote for The Washington Post, The London Observer, Wired, More, and Vanity Fair, and did staff stints at The Hollywood Reporter and Variety. She eventually took her blog Thompson on Hollywood to Indiewire. She taught film criticism at USC Critical Studies, and continues to host the fall semester of “Sneak Previews” for UCLA Extension.